California Law Was A Better Anti-Spam Law

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In the aftermath of federal anti-spam legislation, California's law becomes largely irrelevant. But on technical terms, it was a far more effective law for stopping spam than the current federal law. Why? Because it was an opt-in law, not an opt-out law.

Let me explain: The current federal law allows spammers to keep on spamming you until you opt out of the list. There's no requirement that you opt in at all. Given that every individual, business and organization in the country has the right to spam you under federal law, this adds up to tens of thousands of sources who can legitimately email you even though you never asked to be emailed. You would have to say "no thanks" to each one.

An opt-in law like California's, however, had a much tighter standard: recipients must opt-in to receiving email or, at least, have a relationship with the organization sending them the email.

This is a much higher standard. In fact, it's the permission marketing standard, which requires that marketers only email people with their permission.

In the minds of most people, when they say they don't want to be spammed, what they mean is that they want organizations to adopt permission email marketing standards. But what got from Washington was quite different: they got a law that allows any organization to keep spamming them until they say, "Stop!"

This is hardly a permission marketing stance, but the federal law was passed precisely because the California opt-in law scared the DMA and other marketing special interest groups so much that they lobbied for the passage of the easier, opt-out law.

By passing the opt-out law, legislators in Washington were able to claim that they were doing something to fight spam while, in fact, accomplishing practically nothing at all. The lawmakers are happy, the DMA is happy, and spammers are especially happy, for now they can email people under the protection of U.S. federal law.

The only people getting the shaft with this deal are, of course, all the Internet users who demanded real action on the issue in the first place.

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About the author: Mike Adams is a holistic nutritionist with a passion for teaching people how to improve their health He is a prolific writer and has published thousands of articles, interviews, reports and consumer guides, impacting the lives of millions of readers around the world who are experiencing phenomenal health benefits from reading his articles. Adams is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he writes about or the companies he promotes. In 2007, Adams launched EcoLEDs, a maker of super bright LED light bulbs that are 1000% more energy efficient than incandescent lights. He's also a noted technology pioneer and founded a software company in 1993 that developed the HTML email newsletter software currently powering the NaturalNews subscriptions. Adams volunteers his time to serve as the executive director of the Consumer Wellness Center, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, and pursues hobbies such as Pilates, Capoeira, nature macrophotography and organic gardening. Known on the 'net as 'the Health Ranger,' Adams shares his ethics, mission statements and personal health statistics at www.HealthRanger.org


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Related Articles: • Can-Spam Act court ruling obliterates state anti-spam laws, activists say • Interview with John Levine on the War on SPAM • New international anti-spam council pledges to fight spam around the world	Take Action: Support NaturalNews.com Email this article to a friend Share this article on: NewsVine | digg | del.icio.us Permalink to this article: http://www.NaturalNews.com/000416_anti-spam_federal_law_permission_marketing.html Reprinting this article: Non-commercial use OK, cite NaturalNews.com with clickable link. Embed article link: (copy HTML code below): <a href = "http://www.NaturalNews.com/000416_anti-spam_federal_law_permission_marketing.html">California Law Was A Better Anti-Spam Law</a>